gitlab-ctl tail: cannot follow ‘-’ by name

If /var/log/gitlab is a symlink like

root@gitlab:/var/log# ls -l | grep gitlab
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root   root      29 2015-08-16 13:41 gitlab -> /gitlab-persistent/log/gitlab/

then gitlab-ctl tail always fails with

root@gitlab:/var/log# gitlab-ctl tail
tail: cannot follow ‘-’ by name

The same thing happens if gitlab/ is a non-symlink directory containing symlinks.

Not a fun thing to have happen during a first-time gitlab setup, when you don't even know which logs you're supposed to be looking at.